I had the opportunity to work with Jay St Charles of Pacific Yew Archery, master bowyer and sole maker and distributor of the Thunderbird Recurve bow. We worked for several weekends bringing a collection of wooden and fiberglass bits together to make a precision instrument. The result is my very own thrunderbird recurve bow which I use for traditional archery practice.

The original block

The bow starts out as a central block of layered pine and walnut that is cut to the approximate shape of the grip. The right pine and fiberglass laminates are chosen to get the right weight, and they are assembled and epoxied together under heat and pressure. This is what comes out of the press.

Shaping

You start to shape the handle on the sander, griding away huge amounts of the body of the grip to expose the layers of woods and shape it to your hand.

Tillering

Next, you have to make the bow's limbs straight by slowly shaving away at each side.

Tillering

This is a delicate process as over-correcting can ruin the bow and force you to start over.

Tillering

Narrowing the limbs also affects the draw weight of the bow, so as you shave it down, you occasionally test its poundage.

Tillering

This also helps to test if the limbs stay streight under strain.

Sanding

The longest step in the process is shaping the handle. A week of sanding a scraping yields a grip that is perfectly fit to the owner's hand.

Raw wood

Before sealing, the entire bow is cleaned thuroughly to removed any sawdust hiding in the wood grain.

Finishing

Once the bow is clean and smooth, you can start coating the bow in gun oil to seal it against the elements.

Seven coats in

After letting the bow cure in Jay's barn for a week, I could take it home and continue to sand and coat it with the gun oil very day. Each time the surface became smoother and the grain clearer